Our old scout pack used to do a Cake Auction this time of year, so we’re used to baking cakes by now. Our new pack, though, doesn’t sell the cakes off to raise money (they make plenty in popcorn sales apparently)…instead they EAT THEM ALL UP! The kids were so excited. They put ALL the frosting and ALL the sprinkles on them. Look:
G’s Christmas themed cake of love and joy
B’s cake of randomness.
Even after I took the pictures, they kept coming back and sprinkling on “just a little bit” more.
And for those of you asking “Why all the blue and yellow?” Well, our old pack did scout themed cakes and so the original plan had been to make a Tiger Cub seal and a Webelos seal. Once we found out we could make whatever we wanted, those intricate design plans went way out the window. Whew! Was I ever a relieved Mama.
I was talking to a friend today over “coffee” (I had chai tea and she had lemonade, actually, but we will still call it “coffee” because I can’t think of anything better right now) about the challenges of working a non-specific schedule. I had had all these plans to organize the whole house this week, but got called in to substitute three half days this week in Kindergarten-land (which is more tiring than a whole day of other grades, let me tell you). It was good to get back to work, as I didn’t work at all in December, but it was still hard because I’d had all these mental plans and didn’t get to most of them.
Here’s what I did get done, though. David’s room, before:
Drawers of randomness, part one
Drawers full of randomness, part two
This is the desk after D “cleaned it off” for me. Hahahah
Bed area (which sadly looks the same today)
Bookshelves of messiness (I wish you could see the bottom shelf better, it was scary!)
The closet of doom. I don’t know if those clothes down there at the bottom are dirty or clean.
During:
I sorted everything into categories: Rocks, Office, Ships game, Lego instructions, Nerf Darts, Things Which Do Not Belong To Me, etc.
Again with the Flylady process. I filled everything at least once and took it out. The trash went out three times.
Currently, I’m still not done, but we’re getting there:
The bookshelves now hold books! They’re not organized yet, but they are all on there now. 🙂 And no, I have no idea why he’s collecting root beer & cream soda bottles. None.
I put up the art he brought home from Art Camp (his teacher sketched these). They’ve lived in a pile on the floor since July.
I found school work in EVERY SINGLE DRAWER. No wonder he never can find anything. I bought him an expanding file, sorted his work into classes, and have sent him off to make labels and shove things into the sections. Now that he has been taught to use it he has no excuse not to be organized.
Drawers labeled: Small Toys, Lego Instructions, Memory Stuff, Organized bits of Lego, Office supplies, School stuff, Art supplies.
A place for everything and everything in its place, part one
A place for everything and everything in its place, part two.
I also got some more things organized elsewhere in the house, but that’s a post for tomorrow! 🙂
As you know, I go crazy in January and start cleaning and organizing everything in sight. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the cold, rainy weather.
Yesterday I tackled my hallway bathroom closet, which I guess could also be called my linen closet.
Before:
Okay, so it doesn’t look quite so bad as my brain says it does, but it was making me crazy.
During:
There’s a method to the madness. One box is labeled “Another Room,” one is “Keep,” one is “Donate,” and one is “Toss.” The “Keep” box is the giant pile in the middle.
After several hours and possibly a billion interruptions (Next time I’m putting a Do Not Enter if You Value Your Life sign up.):
Done! I filled one of each other above labeled boxes (except “Keep” which was the stuff that went back in). I took this photo before I labeled the shelves, but they are labeled by what’s in each bin.
Secret surprise if you look in my linen closet: preschool graduation photos of each of my kids!
Today I’m tackling David’s room as part of my Flylady plan. It won’t be done in 15 minutes for sure, but today the desk is getting organized. I’ve been at it an hour now and it’s finally empty. I’ve filled one trash can, one keep box, and one another-room box already. Now I can see why he can’t ever find his school papers. There were a few papers in each messy drawer. AIE!
We decided yesterday that it was going to be our play-in-pajamas-stay-indoors kind of day because we needed one and hadn’t really had a chance to have a day alone, so we spent the morning inside doing practically nothing productive (like watching movies and playing video games and reading magazines), but halfway through that we got a text from a friend begging us to meet her and her kids at the playground, as they’d been sick all break and could use a day outside in the fresh air (what’s that?). So we spent the afternoon at the school playground, playing football and soccer and keep-away and climbing things. It was great fun! 🙂
Then that night I got to go out with several of my favorite “local” people. I put that in quotes because one lives a few blocks from me and another a few miles, and then one lives 20 miles outside of town and the last one 45 miles away. I think it’s funny that they all are “local” even in our small town. We last got together on my birthday last year, what with one thing and another. It was a weird meeting even then. I thought I was mixing up my friend groups and that only a couple people knew each other (there were 6 of us then), but everyone turned out to know everyone else and it was fabulous. So one of the gals mentioned meeting up again and we made it happen and it was, indeed fabulous again! 🙂 We’re already planning another night out together. 🙂 I’m very pleased because these are some of my oldest friends in town. 🙂 Others have requested an “in” with the group…we shall see, we shall see. 🙂 I think our real common core is our ability to laugh at ourselves. 🙂
Today we got up, late, as is the course of things this week. Today it caused a bit of panic. I needed to have gotten up early to tidy for the babysitter, who was coming in unreasonably early to watch the boys while I got my RA infusion. I went out to pick up donuts while 2/3rds of the kids were asleep, but I couldn’t find my debit card once I got there, so I came home empty handed and dreading identity theft and called around to make sure that wasn’t the case and made a quick casserole, which no one really ate. Had my infusion, which was awkward due to several issues, and came home and “rested” which means got-crawled-on-by-boys-while-playing-on-facebook-and-reading-to-boys-and-feeding-them-occasionally. Whee!
Nick eventually came home and we got things ready for church tomorrow and ate dinner. Now everyone is asleep except for me and Greg. He says he’s having nightmares. Ha. He hasn’t slept a full night in his own bed (it’s like musical beds around here) since Halloween, not that I blame him. I haven’t slept or had a crying-free day since his friend’s mom (my friend Jelena) was murdered and her brother kidnapped either. We should probably seek therapy or something. I just keep telling myself that it could be worse and that really I should get over it. It’s not that easy, though. I’ve been writing sad poetry again. That seems to help. I guess 6-year-olds don’t really do sad poetry. They sleep with their mamas. Ah well.
I’ve run out of things to say today. Good night, people!
Yesterday my little family took a tour of the house and looked around. I mean REALLY looked at things: the socks on the floors, the fingerprints on the walls, the dishes on the coffee table, the unmade beds, etc, etc.
Messy bathroom
Then we had a little refresher talk about kindness. We’d talked at church about ways to be kind to others at church (holding doors, handing out hymnals, bringing water to the disabled during fellowship time) and out in public (again holding doors, giving someone with less stuff the first turn in line at the grocery, etc). We needed to think about how to be kind to each other at home. We talked about things like putting away items (clothes, dishes, toys, towels) when we are done with them so other people don’t have to, cleaning up our messes as we make them so they don’t get stuck on so someone has to scrub (rather than wipe) later, and wearing headphones when we’re with our personal electronics so we’re not disturbing the people around us. Then we talked about our 2013 Family Motto. We’ve never really had one before, but as I was reading FlyLady and trying to get back on my cleaning schedule, I’d really liked hers and thought we’d co-opt something like it. “Be as Kind as can be in 2013”
My resolution this year is simply to take a bit better care of myself. To choose ME this year instead of others more often. Because I haven’t done that in a long time and when I look at myself and pay attention, I see that I am another year older, another 20 pounds heavier, and stressed out beyond belief. So I’m going to just be good to myself this year and see where that takes me. 🙂 My best friend mentioned that I need to break that down into a list of Things To Do, so I can check things off at years-end, which is not something I’m very good at remembering to do. In fact, looking back, I fulfilled NONE of mine this year and didn’t appear to make any resolutions at all the several years before that (at least on the computer. I might’ve on paper, now that I’m thinking about it).
Resolutions as Things To Do:
1. Exercise a couple or three times a week. This can include, but is not limited to: walking, swimming, yoga, some kind of Wii sports, whatever gets my heart rate up, actually.
2. Drop a couple of my less-than-enjoyable obligations. I already have two in mind, but I’m not sharing those here yet. 🙂
3. Investigate the idea of going back to school to be a media specialist for schools. I’ve been asked about doing that a lot lately and while I don’t know if I am interested enough yet to go through with going back to school, I’d at least like to look into it.
4. Plan our trip to the UK. Go there. Enjoy ourselves as a couple, rather than as parents.
5. Date my husband more this year. By more, I mean at least once a month go somewhere not chore related on our own and smile at each other. Whee!
6. There is no #6.
7. Figure out a better daily schedule, so each day doesn’t feel like a crisis situation.
8. Pay attention to what I’m eating and drinking so I don’t eat a billion pieces of chocolate or all the french onion dip in just two sittings. I don’t know how to make this one quantifiable yet, as the last two programs I tried that kept track of that stressed me out more than helped me.
9. Scale back on my internet time somehow. I think this will involve dropping some of my newsreader subscriptions and the facebook friends I am not terribly close to will go to unchecked for updates. I’m also turning off a bunch of notifications, as I spend half my time these days seeing double updates, as facebook sends them to my inbox and the phone posts them twice. So that will be done, too.
So that’s quite a lot for now. Some steps have more than one step. So exciting. I’ll set myself a phone reminder to check the list midyear and see how I’m doing. 🙂
oh my (he assures me that he was trying to find something, which led to this mess. I love how that happens.)
the closet full of mostly my stuff and/or empty containers
I don’t have any DURING photos. I was too busy being busy. And now for an explanation of my process. A real life friend asked today how I manage to do all that I do. Here’s how: when I move furniture I take everything out of it. Then I take it as far apart as it goes, unscrewing screws, taking off drawers, legs, anything to make it lighter. Yes, this is time consuming. Yes, it’s tedious. Yes, I probably ought to ask my husband to move stuff for me. But then he’d have to stand around while I internally debated all the pros and cons of where I wanted the item to end up and move the parts back and forth and back and forth while I decided and let’s face it: that would make him insane. I’m trying to avoid insane Nick. Also of note, I didn’t do this room in an hour or even two. I started on it right after I dropped big kids off at school around 7:30am and worked on it off and on, with frequent rest breaks and time off to take Greg to school and to eat meals, until 1:30pm.
Here, for instance, those plastic drawers: mostly empty. Also: lightweight. They’re living in the garage awaiting a trip to another home. There was a little plastic cart in the corner you can’t see that just wheeled on out (also mostly empty, oddly enough). That all got moved the first 15 minutes, then a fifteen minute break.
The file cabinets got emptied out (each one had one empty drawer already). The top one had drawers that came all the way out, the bottom one did not, but I already knew that (that’s how they came to be stacked that way). I only moved them a few feet across the room to hold up the desktop (which, don’t tell David, was the bottom of his crib) of D’s new desk area. I moved those one at a time, with a rest break in between and afterward.
Since the closet was then nearly empty (I still have a stack of file boxes of old high school & college memory stuff in there that needs tending, but that’s another day entirely), I slid the dresser (particleboard, also sans drawers) in there. After that another break, this time for lunch. (See the pattern here?)
The only heavy thing to move at all was the former TV stand – also oddly particle board – but it was much lighter after removing the drawer. (The family that took our old TV is coming to pick it up later this week)
Also in between everything was the ever-present picking up of Lego bricks. They’re EVERYWHERE (they were even, mind-bogglingly, under my bed).
AFTER:
A nice, neat desk area for David, with drawers in the file cabinets for his Scout stuff & papery goodness and the hope chest for Lego brick storage. (Not shown: his display shelves: they’re to the left of the frame)
The closet of joy and emptiness. Or NOT. I found 12 belts in there. 12. He can’t ever complain about a lack of belts again.
(Notice that I’m not showing the beds in these pictures. Yeah. That’s where I dump all the stuff I no longer have any interest in picking up. I put away the stuff that’s big and in the way, but the nitty-gritty stuff that needs a kid who knows where it goes to put it away? Well, that’s what beds are for. And kids.)
A couple weeks ago I realized that a friend I rarely see these days was posting a lot about not having time to finish her work projects and that her son was really lonely. I made a few small overatures of “Hey, send that kid my way” by text message, but heard nothing back. Then a couple days ago we ran into her son at the bagel place and he attacked hugged my son and dragged him all over the place clinging to him. His mom wasn’t with him, but his grandmother relayed the story and later I got a FB message asking if I was at all interested in babysitting. So yesterday I took my big kids to school & headed over to her house to see about making arrangements.
It boiled down to me taking her son about four hours a day, twice a week, on our non-MDO days. He and my son get along famously, so it’s not much more than a couple overly-long playdates a week. In exchange I get nifty art for my wall and art lessons for my boys once the holidays are over. I think it’s an awesome trade, so I said yes.
As we were talking, I realized that she wasn’t looking at me. I thought she was just doodling, but she was, in fact, trying to work and visit all at once. So I scooped up the boys and went home. We played for a couple hours and had lunch and the spare boy (A.) was about to be picked up when I got a call from another friend. She was having a terrible day and needed somewhere to park her eldest while the younger two slept and she got something done. Since the morning had gone so well (I got my kitchen 100% clean while the kids had argument-free playtime), I said “sure.”
So the two moms show up in my driveway at the same time (which wasn’t part of the plan). The spare boy was devastated to have to go home now that there was a new kid to play with. He didn’t tantrum, he just quietly balled up and cried, so I caved and kept both kids for the afternoon. Play with three kids was different than with two. Greg and K. would have played house and grocery store and restaurant. With A. there, they had weird competitions and poured water all over the construction kit. It was…not optimal. K. came inside for “alone time” for a while and I built her a curtain for the reading nook (an adult can see straight in from above, but kid sized people cannot – perfect). The boys were sad that they’d made her need alone time and made rules for further play, such as “no competitions, no slamming doors, K. gets alone time because she’s a girl, and no water in the bedroom because we’ll put it places it doesn’t belong.” Greg picked flowers from the backyard and gave them to her. Things went well after that. 🙂 I got a couple loads of laundry done before snacktime and then we got everyone off to their own houses.
Of course the day didn’t end there. After that I had to take all of my kids to the store to buy supplies for the box car derby. Then come home and make dinner (it was my night). Then drive kids to/from scouts. And then after all that, time to work on PTA stuff.
What a day. It was exhausting. The sad thing is, other than having two extra (and super nice) kids, it wasn’t that different from a regular day.
This day has been crazy. I got up, had breakfast with Nick, then picked up my mom and went out to Hawkins to get the kids. We got the full tour of the house remodel as it stands (bedrooms & bathrooms done, walls up but not sheetrocked for the rest of the house) and got to see G driving the tractor. Sadly we had to leave quickly to get back home in time for B’s birthday party. But wait, there’s more. My mom told the kids “let’s stop by the bagel place” which I took to mean “let’s pick up bagels.” Nope, we ended up stopping, eating bagels, visiting with G’s friend that we saw there, and then finally going back to my mom’s house. I left the kids there and went home to clean. I got it all done, got the cake decorated, got the party supplies out, and then the kids came back home.
I bought a cake from the store and added the giant Pokeball by hand, which actually saved me money as I didn’t have to buy all those different colors of frosting and little ball shaped confetti, nor did I have to pay for a custom cake:
Our kids came back to our house not too long before the party. While waiting for other kids to arrive, we decorated goodie bags with Pokemon stickers (that we already had and never used!). After all the kids arrived, we had Pokemon Training in the Battle Arena:
Then we had Pin the Tail on Pikachu, a game thought of by my B. (And another money saver, as I had all the supplies on hand)
After that we went fishing for Water Pokemon cards (for their goodie bags; the cards were purchased new for the event, the “fishing poles” were made of kid yard tools, string, and magnets we already had on hand):
Then we took the kids back inside for a Pokemon Trivia game while other adults hid stuff in the backyard for the scavenger hunt. The kids made up all the trivia questions and I made the screen saver for the blu-ray player. If they paid attention to the screen saver, they got hints about the answers.
After trivia we went back outside for another game: Rocket Relay Challenge. The challenge was to get the balloons to hit the target after launching them in the air. We used the “pond” from the water game and put a target in the middle.
Then we played the Pokemon Evolution Game, which involved coccooning your Pokemon completely before they erupted out a newly evolved creature. (I bought toilet paper at the dollar store for this purpose and we didn’t even use it all)
Then we started the Scavenger Hunt. We hid Pokemon related things around the backyard and had clues to get them to the next place.
At each place they got a piece for their goodie bags, like a “pokeball,” a “pokemon,” some “berries,” and then “training tools.” (Balls, animals, candy, and bubbles all came from the dollar store.)
After all that we had cake
and presents
and played Pokepark (B’s present from his grandma) on the Wii until parents came to gather up kids. It was a great party! 🙂
I’ve been working overtime this week preparing for B’s 8th birthday party. We sent out invitations last week shaped & photoshopped to look like Pokemon cards. I’m thinking they’ve mostly gone astray, as I’ve only heard back from the two parents that I personally talked to about the party. That being said, we invited 16, are prepared for about 12, and will probably have just 6 kids. You know how it goes. I’ve spent hours online researching Pokemon (which my kid loves & I know oddly little about outside of the fact that they are playing cards). I’ve made signs for the various “centers” in the yard/house. I’ve come up with games that can be played both inside or out (there’s rain in the forecast, but we rarely get it when they say we will) .
Where were we?
Wednesday we blogged about here, as it was B’s birthday. We took cupcakes up to school, but got a bit in trouble for them, as we were apparently misinformed by the teacher about bringing homemade cupcakes. Oh well. They were yummy and no children had food allergies in that class anyway. The aforementioned friend did, in fact, come over.
Yesterday MDO was open, but David stayed home sick, so I didn’t get a break all week. He wasn’t too bad off, mostly just coughing and fevery. It only lasted that day. I left him watching TV and went off to my piano lesson, which he minded not at all.
We’ve also got well child check-ups this morning, playgroup after at the park, and a new TV coming in this afternoon, so it’s shaping up to be a super busy day. Hope I have enough spoons. 🙂
It’s my middle son’s 8th birthday today. I love him so much! We had special cranberry orange muffins (from a package, not homemade, that was part of the request) for breakfast and played Quirkle (his new favorite game – from his Aunt Kay). I will be bringing his class homemade white cupcakes with colored frosting & mini m&m’s on top after lunch. After school I’d planned on having one of his friends over for a while (but haven’t heard back from the mom yet). Then we’ll have pizza for dinner and his present from grandma after.
Lisa Holcomb 